FIRE! Now what?

I am a small business owner who works out of an office in my home.  I LOVE working from home. It gives me the ability to be involved  with the animals that inspired me to travel this path.  Saturday, February 1, 2012 at about 3:00pm I was home working on a project while my other half ran some errands.  He had started a load of laundry in the dryer before he left about a half hour earlier.

As I became involved in my work I tuned out most everything around me until I noticed  my lights flicker for a moment.  I looked up and a moment later noticed I smelled a hot electrical smell so off I went to see what was going on.  I went down stairs one level and saw smoke billowing from my basement and my evacuation plan kicked into play.  Grab car keys, pull dogs out into back yard, grab phone and call 9-1-1 while moving car up to shop.. get dogs out of back yard an into van now parked up at shop.  Call my other half and tell him our home is on fire and get home asap.

It all worked as planned.  Fire department showed up and saved the house from burning down to the ground.  We are going to be out of our home for a few months while repair work goes on but we’re safe and all is covered by good fire insurance for our home.

Somethings I thought of after the fact.  What if I’d lost my computer and my netbook in the fire?  Would I have lost all my work and my files?  Fortunately for me, I started saving things to DropBox back in 2010 so my work files are always available to me even if I don’t have access to my computer. My next job is to set up my accounting files on cloud as well.

We have a good insurance policy but we’d be in  a world of hurt if we did not.  Do you have full replacement value coverage?  Do you have your computer information no only backed up but located in a place you can access after a disaster?  What about an evacuation plan? Do you know how you’d leave your building safely?  Have you practiced what you would do?

Please take a few moments to review your evacuation plans, your backup computer protocol and schedule an insurance review to ensure you have adequate coverage. Thankfully it is business as usual at BlackFyre Media Works!, but if I’d failed to plan well I could be facing a total loss today.